The present invention relates to a method as defined in the preamble of claim 1 for including the telecommunication arising from remote monitoring of elevators and/or escalators and/or automatic doors and/or from the use of an emergency telephone in the contracts between a company maintaining the elevators and/or escalators and/or automatic doors and a client using the elevators and/or escalators and/or automatic doors.
In an elevator directive comprising provisions concerning elevators, it is stated that every elevator installed shall be provided with a two-way voice connection and alarm buttons on the top of the elevator for installers for emergency situations. Therefore, an emergency telephone is a necessity in elevators to improve the safety of elevator passengers.
Remote monitoring of elevators again refers to a technique of monitoring the state and condition of elevators from a distance by utilizing a telecommunication connection.
Remote monitoring refers to procedures generally used to observe the state and condition of a device by measuring parameters whose changes reflect changes in the state and condition of the device. In remote monitoring in general, the state and condition of the device is monitored regularly. When a change occurs in the state and condition, a more detailed fault diagnosis can be performed. Fault diagnosing again refers to procedures used to detect and identify a fault and locate the cause of the fault. The most important function of a fault diagnostics system is to detect a fault reliably and definitely as early as possible.
Sometimes a diagnostics system is programmed to produce a suggestion of how the fault detected could be eliminated. In this way, it is possible to implement the task of determining the need for preventive maintenance of elevators.
In remote monitoring of the state and condition of elevators, the elevators themselves give warnings of faults to be expected. Thus, the wear of components can be detected before they fail completely. Therefore, it is possible to set a fixed target value for the failure frequency of elevators beforehand to measure the reliability and quality of the elevators. For example, the target set for an elevator may be only one fault of a nature interrupting the passenger's elevator journey per year.
Automatic doors generally refers to automatically operated and controllable doors in buildings. Several different types of such automatic doors are known, such as e.g. upward acting doors, folding doors, fireproof doors, revolving doors, sliding doors, rolling doors, turning doors, etc.
The maintenance services for automatic doors in buildings cover preventive maintenance and round-the-clock emergency duty and door repair and modernization services. Through a maintenance contract, more effective maintenance of automatic doors is achieved, because it is thus possible to service all automatic doors in the building at the same time regardless of the type or make of the doors. Moreover, preventive maintenance of automatic doors improves the usability of the doors, increases their service life and reduces the need for repairs. In this way, cost savings are achieved. Preventive maintenance also improves the operational safety of automatic doors. The same applies in the case of elevators and escalators, too.
At present, the emergency telephone and the remote monitoring system use the same telecommunication connection, which according to the present state of the art is preferably either a wired telephone connection or a wireless GSM connection. This telecommunication connection is owned by the client, who pays the bills for the connection to the operator. In the case of a GSM telephone, this leads to problems in the management of SIM cards. To allow an installed device to be put into service immediately, the installer of the telecommunication connection must always have the SIM card with him at the time of installation. There may sometimes be difficulties in having a SIM card owned and managed by a client always brought in time to the elevator installation site. In addition, the company installing the elevator and maintaining it after installation does not necessarily know beforehand which operator's card the client has acquired.
As is known, today the client is invoiced for the services covered by a contract of maintenance of an elevator and/or escalator and/or automatic door by the company responsible for the maintenance. In addition, the client is also invoiced by the teleoperator for their telecommunication connection, which is used to transfer both the remote monitoring communication and emergency calls. Problems are encountered in the management of invoices by a large-scale manager, because a large-scale manager has many maintenance contracts and therefore significant numbers of invoices are generated.
The main problem at present appears to be the fact that the client has to pay an invoice both to the operator and to the company maintaining the elevators and/or escalators and/or automatic doors.
The object of the present invention is to overcome the drawbacks and problems encountered in the above-mentioned prior-art solutions.